The Turnaround Artist

Shantanu Narayen has reshaped Adobe, helping to nearly double its stock price in two years, after a very public dispute with Apple's Steve Jobs in 2010.

Shantanu Narayen tends to fly under the radar in Silicon Valley, so he was in uncharted waters when Steve Jobs dragged him and his company, Adobe Systems , into the headlines in 2010. The dispute centered around Flash, Adobe's Web software standard for enabling video. In an open letter on Apple's website, Jobs blasted Flash as flawed technology. Narayen was left to defend his company, which once had a close partnership with Apple.

The soft-spoken engineer was no match for Jobs' bravado. And even with market-leading...